hmmm, didnt seem to hurt the bulldogs...
Bottomed out later and had 3 father sons under the old rule. Libba, Wallis and Hunter all would have gone higher. Jake Stringer, MacCrae and Bontempelli plus those guys have given them heaps of equivalent "first rounders" and top ten picks.
They also lost higgins and Cooney for next to nothing and werent afraid to trade out griff - theyre scared to get rid of their best players.
there was no need to go moneyball crazy like we have and continue to do, just takes up spots on our list - who knows how many shorts and castagnas we've missed out on simply bc we didnt give them a go instead going down the moneyball path
Higgins had not contributed much due to injury for several years. They knew Cooney was finished because of his knee (just look at his Essendon form). Griff asked to leave so they didn't have much choice and because they wanted Boyd, found a way to satisfy a player who was finished and at the same time satisfy GWS with a trade.
I do agree whole heartedly with the moneyball issue. We really went overboard with it to the detriment of bringing young talent in. Combine that with us finishing mid table and out of the top 10 picks repeatedly has hurt us so much.
The one really poor decision in the draft was to ignore Heppell. He was there to be picked and we went with someone that nobody rated in the top 20. To me, that was worse than Tambling-Franklin because many "experts" had Tambling as the top pick in the 2004 draft. At the same time, Franklin's psych profile remains one of the worst ever recorded according to people that I know who made the software for the profiling.
Just goes to show talent spotting is not an exact science and just sometimes you have to go "with your gut" and not with just statistics.
Ok, was lake finished too? Ward? Hill? You're really going to justify every single one of them?
and would people be happy with pick 37 for Lids bc his achilles is stuffed? This place would melt down. Regardless of what you think of Cooney's knee, letting a former brownlow medalist go for pick 37 shows guts. Could you imagine our club doing the same?
WB also lost Lake, Ward, Hill during that time. Yes they got a top 6 pick for Ward as compensation but that doesnt equate to guaranteed gun player as we all know too well.... They were hardly over compensated for the players they did lose. They arent afraid to take average compensation/average picks and go to the well again to make something of it.
2010 - Wallis and Libba F/s and Hill rookie. Yes lucky 2 get 2 x f/s's but they didnt get anything else that draft so not a massive free hit.
2011 - Smith with a pick in the teens, Dalhaus as a rookie and Dickson as a late pick
2012 - Stringer, McCrae(Ward compo), Hrovat(Lake pick), Hunter, Johannison as a rookie
2013 - Bontempelli,
2014 - Daniel, Lin Jon and redpath both rookie upgrades.
Theyve picked up a fair few of their core players during this period that we are blaming for our current position. Its not just luck bc of 2 father son picks. Libba and Wallis came in the same draft, so you could say they got 1 free top pick there, big deal.
Overall I dont buy it, its rubbish, better to man up and say yep we just stuffed up rather than continually make excuses and blaming our position on outside forces or the oppositions position on luck.
It only takes 4 good players and it transforms their side. Take out those guys (Bont, Stringer, Libba and MacCrae) and I would say they become a very average side. As with Cooney, they knew he was finished and I know that for a fact through medical colleagues. So there was no bravery there.
Thats a very simplistic and naive way of looking at it - its not as if they were given a free hit with 4 top players, they still wouldve drafted 1st rounders anyway, so Im not sure why you are making out as if they luckily fell into their lap. At best they received 1 extra ie wallis and libba f/s in the same year. They earnt stringer and mcrae by losing ward and where they finished. The respective rebuilds started pretty similarly, difference being they werent scared to take a few hits along the way whereas our club reckons the fans wouldnt have stood for us doing the same so we went half arsed.
Oh yeah, Cooney is still playing by the way
In 2010 we came second last, WB were TOP 4. They then took a plunge down the ladder and in just 2 years were BOTTOM 4. By 2012, the expansion sides draft concessions had lessened.They are the facts. When we bottomed out we had to deal with the worst of the concessions. That is also a fact.
I'm not sure what you are disputing. Had we bottomed out 2 years later, we would have been in a far better position with regards to talent to pick.
That is pretty obvious I would have thought. It was worsened by the fact that we picked Conca over Heppell.
And to Yeahright, Conca over Heppell defied all logic - gut AND science. Everyone had said Heppell would be picked before Conca.
And Cooney....well he's still running around but he has hardly played a good game since they got rid of him which proves my point. Yes, he is a Brownlow medal winner but that happened 8 years ago and in footy that's a long time.
Even worse that in 2010 they were top 4 and still managed to strip back the list, lose Griff, Cooney, Higgins, lake & Hill, rebuild and rebound past us with a shedload more talent than what we have. Regardless of how you want to spin it, its obvious - we have a problem houston!
You still dont stuffing get it, its not the lack of top end talent in those 2 years that has put us where we are, its filling up list spots with moneyball instead of kids. As I asked earlier, how many potential castagnas/shorts etc have we missed out on bc of this strategy?
Cooney is playing poo bc he doesnt care, he still has his pace, he just doesnt care and is playing for the paycheck.
